Daily review 30/09/2019

Written By: - Date published: 5:47 pm, September 30th, 2019 - 13 comments
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Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

13 comments on “Daily review 30/09/2019 ”

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  1. Bearded Git 1
    30 September 2019 at 6:19 pm

    This is interesting-Jordan (Dirty Politics) Williams and his mates seem to have made a pigs ear of the Taxpayer Union’s accounts-from the NBR:

    “The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has asked previous donors for more funding as it claimed to be in an $80,000 “fiscal hole” and warned it may need to shut down if debts can’t be paid.

    But executive director Jordan Williams told NBR the request sent out on September 25 – just last week – is no longer accurate and the right-wing tax lobby group set up in 2013 is in a “better position,” although he wouldn’t say whether the $80,000 ‘hole’ had been filled.

    The note also cited higher costs from a “very difficult employment situation” that had hurt the organisation and that the “full extent of the hole only became clear in July.” It didn’t provide further details on the employment issue.

    It said the “situation is dire” and the union had been “running in the red” since its “enormous capital gains tax win.”

    That refers to the government’s proposal to introduce a capital gains tax, which was abandoned in April after it was unable to reach a consensus following the Tax Working Group’s recommendations. The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union ran the “Axethistax” campaign to block the tax.

    “To a degree, we have been a victim of our own success. We built the operation to handle what we expected to be a two-year campaign to defeat the CGT,” the union’s message said.

    The victory left the organisation with a cost structure larger than its outcome, it said in the note.

    The note said online fundraising efforts – which make up a third of the NZTU’s income – have “dropped off” since the capital gains tax was abandoned. In the previous 12 months, online fundraising that used to net $25,000 per ask now only brings in $5000 to $10,000.

    The union had “worked intensively” to lower costs but its “immediate problem is the level of debt.

    “Unless we can cover the debts, we struggle to see how the organisation can continue into 2020,” the note said.

    Williams assured NBR the organisation was now running a surplus but admitted there were a couple of months when it wasn’t.

    “We are confident we will come through it and obviously have to trim our cost structures after the tax win. The situation is a lot better than a couple of days ago. We only ever operate on the goodwill of our thousands of donors,” he said.

    He said the organisation now knew the importance of moving more of its small-dollar online donors to monthly giving, as its funding was “too lumpy and we have been caught out.”

    On the record

    Its most recent financial statements for 2016 showed the union received about $81,000 in donations and another $70,000 in membership subscriptions. The year before, it received more than $185,000 in donations and $11,000 in subscriptions.

    A spokesperson for the New Zealand Companies Office said the NZTU was required to file an annual return but had not done so since 2016, despite lobbying for fiscal prudence from other corporate entities.

    Earlier this year it was revealed the NZTU counted the tobacco giant British American Tobacco among its corporate funders although it didn’t disclose that in its reports or press releases. It had previously objected to cigarette tax increases and plain packaging laws in New Zealand.

    The corporate funding was revealed by The Guardian as part of a series on the huge damage done by the tobacco industry.

    At the time the NZTU said it had a policy of protecting the privacy of individual donors but denied the British American Tobacco funding had influenced its views.

    In April, a long-running defamation case between Williams and former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig ended after a retrial that Craig won.

    In the first High Court case, a jury had found overwhelmingly for Williams and awarded him $1.27 million in damages. However, the High Court said that was excessive and ordered a retrial. The Court of Appeal refused to reinstate the damages but said only the part of the case that dealt with damages should be reheard.

    The court formally dismissed Williams’ cross-appeal asking for the jury’s damages award to be reinstated. He was also ordered to pay Craig $35,000 costs for the Supreme Court case.

    Wellington public relations veteran Barrie Saunders acts as chair of the NZTU but referred all comment to Williams. Political commentator David Farrar is treasurer.”

    • McFlock 1.1
      30 September 2019 at 6:47 pm

      So basically their business model is part "secret pr for merchants of death" and part "make rich but stupid tories paranoid about the gummint so the fools give money to the morally (and apparently almost fiscally) bankrupt".

      I'm shocked, shocked to discover gambling is taking place on the premises, sort of thing.

    • David Mac 1.2
      30 September 2019 at 9:55 pm

      I think there is a popular misconception that the people that vote for National are wealthy. Most of them aspire to be wealthy, they think it will lead to contentment.

      Quick to see the benefits of association and faster to acknowledge the lubricating qualities of cash many feel obliged to assist their knights in need. Jordan Williams, Cam Slater, the sucker wealth aspirants throw their beer money.

      The poor dears think they are helping.

      • David Mac 1.2.1
        30 September 2019 at 10:08 pm

        If you've been sitting at the poker table for an hour and you haven't worked out who the Donkey is, it's you. National voter come Jordan donor

  2. In Vino 2
    30 September 2019 at 6:58 pm

    So the suggestion is that some funds went into fighting the Colin Craig thing..? Amusing, even if untrue.

  3. greywarshark 3
    30 September 2019 at 7:34 pm

    https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2019/09/climate-change-future-comes-to-nelson.html

    Views of Nelson CBD with flooding going up the creek which has drained part of the swamp that forms the flat land for the business area. It will be flooded permanently in the medium term. I don't know how they will cope. The City Council building, there is a new library planned – I don't know where, the supermarkets, the fire station, the police are slightly higher. It will be a problem. The cathedral may preside over a sort of St Marks Square scenario, which floods at high tide up to the Steps.

    • Exkiwiforces 3.1
      30 September 2019 at 11:03 pm

      Grey,

      The back creek or saltwater creek in Nelson’s CBD has always flooded on a King Tide, I suppose with the effects of CC is only going to make matters worse in the coming years/ decades. But most people wouldn’t be effected or will don’t care until the Maitai spills its banks on a King Tide in the coming decades.

      • Prickles 3.1.1
        30 September 2019 at 11:52 pm

        Agreed. I grew up in one of those streets pictured (50+ years ago) and can remember how exciting it was to see how far up the water came. It never came into the house but certainly lapped the top step a few times.

        Visitors to the city find it a little odd to see "Flooding" signs so far from any obvious river, creek or the sea. If they park in the Wakatu carpark when the tide is low then return on high tide they wish they had taken notice of the signs and parked elsewhere.

        • greywarshark 3.1.1.1
          1 October 2019 at 11:11 am

          Prickles

          You give the impression it happens every day with high tide. Let me assure people that this is not so, it is when there is a king tide which is occasional. But when there is a big tide and very heavy rain, the stormwater does build up then. In one pic yesterday it would have been up to the ankles by the kerb which is outside the Organic Co-op shop at 31 Vanguard Street which you are invited to visit if you are visiting Nelson the lovely city!

          A little further towards the sea, on I think nearby Rutherford Street, is a plaque showing where the sea line used to be. The future line is yet to be known.

          Exkiwi
          I didn’t know you had a Nelson connection. You remember it well I think. The news item didn’t mention the Maitai, but when it gets going on one side of the CBD and Saltwater Creek on the other, it will be canoe hire paradise. And the Maitai is such a pleasant little river, but there was a young man drowned when floating down it on a tyre when in full flow after a concerted downpour. He lost control, couldn’t stay up. Friends ran to the Collingwood St bridge with ropes for him to grab onto but that failed.

  4. Anne 4
    30 September 2019 at 7:35 pm

    On a lighter note (things have been quite intense lately) I received this email:

    This is to confirm you have a service booked with a Fisher & Paykel serviceman. The service will take place at blankety-blank between 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM on the 2nd October….

    Please ensure that our serviceman has a safe working environment….

    This should be interesting.wink

  6. Exkiwiforces 6
    30 September 2019 at 10:46 pm

    A bit of heads up that African swine fever has been detected in Timor-Leste, just a note for those that don’t know pork is a major source of the dietary intake through out the Sth Pacific Region let alone throughout the Asia Region with China has already said that they facing a major short fall of pork and I think from yesterday’s ABC’s Landline around 100m tons I believe.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-09-30/african-swine-fever-outbreak-in-timor-leste/11559812

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-28/swine-fever-interview:-simon-quilty/11557706

    • greywarshark 6.1
      1 October 2019 at 11:02 am

      African Swine Fever ASF – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_swine_fever_virus

      Food problems will grow around the world helped by disease spread by the trading in the overheated capitalist system, f.cked-up political systems and countries' malicious, morbid and noxious behaviour. In Cuba food production is insufficient – rationing has been necessary for years and still in 2019:

      In 1971 an outbreak of the disease occurred in Cuba, resulting in the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic. The outbreak was labeled the "most alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.

      Six years after the event, the newspaper Newsday, citing untraceable sources, claimed that anti-Castro saboteurs, with at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials, allegedly introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba six weeks before the outbreak in 1971, to destabilize the Cuban economy and encourage domestic opposition to Fidel Castro. The virus was allegedly delivered to the operatives from an army base in the Panama Canal Zone by an unnamed U.S. intelligence source.

      The USA has been active in putting a spoke in Cuba's communist policies for so long that it is hard to know truth from suspicion. But pigs were an important part of their animal production and roamed freely in some areas, eating spoiled food in effect being hygiene agents.

      …More strenuous rationing on food and other basics was imposed in May 2019 due to the country's economic problems, caused partly by a stiffening U.S. embargo and the loss of aid from Venezuela.

      …Rationing in Cuba refers to the system of food distribution known in Cuba as the Libreta de Abastecimiento ("Supplies booklet"). The system establishes the rations each person is allowed to buy through that system, and the frequency of supplies.

      Despite rumors of ending, the system still exists. As of 2012, a coupon book taken to a ration shop provided family minimums for rice, sugar, matches, and oil, above the average wage of £15/month. On top of rationing, the average wage at the end of 2005 was 334 regular pesos per month ($16.70 per month) and average monthly pension was $9…

      (Incidentally Martin Cruz Smith's book Havana Bay is a story of Russian aid and sugar, and the ramifications of existence under other's economic control. Real swashbuckling story.)